A hard hoop lesson learned via social media

NHBCO strips Pembroke's Div. II Player of the Year award due to unsportsmanlike tweet

High school sports and social media collided in New Hampshire this weekend, in what should serve as a great cautionary tale for athletes and Twitter users of all ages.

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Posted Mar. 25, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Posted Mar. 25, 2014 at 2:00 AM

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High school sports and social media collided in New Hampshire this weekend, in what should serve as a great cautionary tale for athletes and Twitter users of all ages.

On Saturday, the New Hampshire Basketball Coaches Organization stripped Pembroke Academy senior Patrick Welch of the Player of the Year honor that was bestowed upon him earlier in the week, just two days after he'd led the Spartans past Portsmouth, 49-40, to win the Division II championship for the second straight year.

About an hour after the conclusion of that game, an image of a tweet from the account of @PatrickWelch_15 began circulating on Twitter. It read, "Shout out to Portsmouth, you may have won in the regular season but we won the (championship). You suck," followed by a vulgar hashtag.

Though the NHBCO did not attribute its action specifically to that tweet, the Concord Monitor reported the decision was likely the result of a social media posting. Bishop Brady guard Jourdain Bell was named the new Player of the Year.

"It has come to the NHBCO executive board's attention that Pat Welch displayed flagrant unsportsmanlike behavior," wrote NHBCO president Gary Noyes in an e-mail to media over the weekend. "We have contacted Pembroke Academy and informed them of our decision."

The NHBCO decision cost Welch a spot in the Senior All-Star Games at New Hampshire Technical Institute and in the Twin-State Game against Vermont this summer. It also cast a spotlight on social media and the big role it plays for today's youth.

The 6-foot-1 Welch, to anyone who's seen him play, is a competitor. This year, he had to be. Arguably, no player in the state received more defensive attention, from double-teams to box-and-one defenses, all designed to try to take away the best weapon on Division II's best team, and he still averaged 23 points a game.

High school sports — basketball, in particular — can be heated. Opposing players are in contact throughout, clutching, grabbing and blocking each other. Talking to each other, too. Against a backdrop of frenzied fans, the air is often heavy with conflict.

Twitter, with no censorship — except for length — has become a way for teens (and many adults) to release their emotion, sending their observations and opinions into their world of followers. Often, the more outrageous you are, the more followers you get.

Some coaches, well aware of the potential for disaster and providing bulletin-board material to an opponent, have limits on what their players can tweet. Some high schools block access to the website during the school day.

The world of local sports has become a lot smaller in a generation, since I was captaining a high school baseball team in Western Massachusetts that was largely ignored by the region's media outlets.

Had a reporter ever approached me for my thoughts after the game, I wouldn't have been able to string together three coherent words. Had I had access to a social media platform like Twitter, any opinions would have been kept to myself. Most of my teenage thoughts, looking back, were password-protected.

There are more responsibilities to being a high school athlete these days, especially in communities that care deeply about the outcomes. In basketball hotbeds like Pembroke and Portsmouth, for example, players routinely find themselves approached by reporters after games, win or lose. Performances are analyzed practically in real time on Twitter and later on high school sports websites that cater to hardcore fans.

The Clippers' 53-49 win at Pembroke on Jan. 30 is the only game the Spartans have lost these last two years. The programs have combined to win four of the last six Division II titles.

But what the NHBCO showed with its ruling is that sportsmanship is one thing that should never go out of style.

"It is with great sadness that this committee has to act on this situation, but we strive to uphold the tenet that this award is not based solely on a basketball player's ability but also on that player's character and demonstrated sportsmanship," concluded Noyes, who did not return a call seeking additional comment on Sunday.

The NHBCO was right to take action. Hopefully, it's a lesson learned for Welch, who'll be playing college basketball somewhere in the next year or two.

Plus a whole generation of others.

Mike Zhe is a Seacoast Media Group staff writer. He can be reached at mzhe@seacoastonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeZhe603.